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Comment by justaguyhere | Hacker News Reader

When a foreigner lands in the US, the first thing she'd notice are how big things are - cars, super markets, the amount of food they give in restaurants, the size of soda cups, popcorn "buckets" etc. Americans like their big cars. I've heard them make fun of small cars as "toys" many times. It would be interesting to see how these tiny cars are received in a market that is used to having pretty much everything big.

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I would assume that in high-density areas, having a smaller car that's easier to control and park would be an advantage over the bigger cars. Fuel cost is also a factor with smaller cars usually being more efficient, especially in urban traffic conditions.

I would expect these electric cars would probably compete with these smaller models in dense urban areas.

Yet the smart car never really took off, even in said high-density areas.

Maybe the smart car was too small, but “Small” cars (by American standards, anyway) are still popular. They’re just disguised as SUVs and classified as “subcompact crossovers”. With how wide American roads tend to be, the Smart car is perhaps unnecessarily small for America.

Yet you can park in many spaces in SF that a regular car cannot. So it can’t just be about utility...

Driving a small car around the behemoths on American roads can be terrifying. Driving a tiny car is so much worse I wouldn't even consider it... It's about what (and how) other people drive as much as my own tastes

Plant a flag on the roof? :P

Recently in our parking garage they marked two parking lots on the corner for compact cars. I usually park quite close to these spots and I have yet to see a truly compact car parked there. I have even seen pickup trucks parked there! I once showed it to the parking lot attendant and he just shrugged and said it looked compact to him :)

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